this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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I 100% share in your skepticism.
This is where a lot of the online talk about "the DNC" gets me. Like sure, the DNC wants their preferred candidate as an organizing body I'm sure, but the media did everything it could to keep Bernie from winning the nomination as well. I remember people on MSNBC of all places talking about how dangerous nominating Bernie Sanders would be.
They attack it in straightforward ways (calling them "communists", "socialists", "Marxists") in more republican-leaning media, and they attack it in other, less straightforward means in other type of media (calling the plans "stupid", saying that they'll "never work" that we "don't have the money", or "it'll cost more in taxes!").
I just don't see it at all. I wish I was more hopeful about this stuff but with the individualistic behavior of the American populace, the mass media landscape, and the way the Internet has been sculpted into something palatable or even usable by the oligarchs to get what they want (perhaps even more cheaply than it was in traditional media) I just don't believe it is possible to win with some "better message".
The only thing I could see saving this country is a groundswell of old-style civic behavior where people largely tune out or drop off from mass media and social media and start connecting with their neighbors and building actual community. I am not optimistic about that either.
I agree with you with the exception of Bernie’s 2016 campaign. The head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, was forced to step down after evidence was found of her deliberately favoring Hillary over Bernie prior to the primary. This came after the primary vote of course.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/24/debbie-wasserman-schultz-resigns-dnc-chair-emails-sanders
I agree that they didn't really give him a fair shake in 2016...however, they thought they were representing their best interests at the time and that a "fascism" proxy would lose handily to a "socialism" proxy in Sanders. They or may not have been right, and there is a lot of debate about that and I'm honestly not sure myself what to believe. He was never a serious candidate in that race and everyone probably including his own supporters knew that. In 2020, he got much closer to securing the nomination and that is why we saw the beginning of the attacks the media will toss at any Bernie-like candidate.
I haven’t thought of it that way before, but you’re absolutely correct. There’s honestly no way to tell which is the chicken and which the egg in that scenario. Did the DNC promote Hillary because the media leaned into “socialist Bernie,” or did the DNC paint him as socialist in contrast to Hillary and the media ran with it? It’s an equally thought-provoking and nauseating concept.